What makes a person good or evil? For many, the answer lies in intent and individual responsibility. Today, I’m going to tell you why it has little to do with either. At least, not in the way you think.
I can’t count the times I’ve heard a pop icon or a public figure say, “Just believe in yourself.” A famous person is asked something along the lines of “How did you get to where you are today?” and the response is normally the same: “I believed in myself.” It is said so often that it has become a platitude. But why is it said? And what does it actually mean?
Passion. What a word. As college students, this word probably means a lot to a good number of us. We’re told time and time again to major in something we love and to join organizations centered around ideas we’re passionate about. The funny thing about this is that when we first arrived on campus armed with twin XL sheets and a shower caddy, a lot of us may have thought we knew what we were passionate about, only to change our minds a little further down the road.
The other week in my English theory course, we were talking about sexuality, feminism and the issues of gender. Specifically, we were dissecting works like Michel Foucault’s “The History of Sexuality,” Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” and Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble.” If you know any of the three of these works, then you’d know they all share one thing in common: density. These works are all so dense that it takes a significant amount of poise to parse through them, though even at times, I find the lazier side of myself resorting to calling their arguments “wack” and closing the book.
When a liberal speaker comes to UF, there’s conservative outcry. “How come we never get any conservative speakers?” they say. They claim to be suffocated by safe spaces, when their safety was never actually threatened. Yet when there’s opposition to a conservative speaker, those on the other side of the political spectrum are called snowflakes and crybabies.
I recently read a collection of short essays by Oliver Sacks titled “Gratitude.” These essays, particularly “My Periodic Table,” got me thinking about my own experiences, and this got me writing about my life.
About two months ago, a man wearing an armband depicting a swastika stood firmly on Turlington Plaza. Jewish professors came to his aid to ensure he was not harmed. Passionate students came forward in art and song to discredit his hate. Well-meaning as his opponents were, he still got the attention he wanted, and a debate sparked on campus about the nature of free speech and how far the public is willing to limit that sacred right for the safety of all.
In a short piece for The New Yorker, Cirocco Dunlap describes the wandering between New York City and Los Angeles that was much of her young adulthood. From within the limits of each city, the other seems much more appealing, yet when she gets there, the culture and habits of the locals only make her long for the place she just left. Back and forth, she wavers between both ends of American culture, eventually ending by stating “halfway between New York and L.A., I imploded. I am so much happier now.”
I’m not a big fan of Tomi Lahren — never have been. The 24-year-old ultra-conservative pundit from TheBlaze has made a career, if only for a few years, by belching her intentionally inflammatory opinions to arouse a like-minded right-wing audience. But last week, she finally said something of interest while appearing as a guest on “The View.”
When the president of the U.S. uses Twitter to get his message out, it’s safe to say that Twitter has become part of mainstream media consumption. With 140 characters or less, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the facts.
There has been some debate about the ethics of so-called sanctuary cities. Let’s look at one argument against non-compliance with federal law enforcement and whether it holds up.
In my time at this university, I’ve found the college experience often presents a fascinating intersection of tastes. Some of us consider ourselves full-blown adults, while others lean more towards an “adult-lite” classification, resulting in a hilariously wide variety of hedonistic preferences.
I’ve always been an anime fan, and I’ve never been too keen on hiding it. That’s not to say I go around wearing metal head covers or writing names in my black journal, but if anyone asks me, I’m never shy. In fact, it hypes me up. I love talking about new anime or what will happen in the next episodes of unfinished shows. However, what I want to talk about today is not which anime I think are worth watching, but how I got into anime, and why you should, too.
Let’s think about what the figure 0.00003 percent means. Imagine taking a test with 1,000 questions on it and getting three questions correct. That’s pretty awful, right? It’s bad enough you only got three questions right, but at least you got something. Now imagine you got three questions right, but then you wanted to retake it. You were hoping to get maybe four or five right this time. Nothing too crazy, but a small improvement would be nice. Instead, you get the test back to see you didn’t get any questions right. Out of 1,000, not even one. Think about this, but instead imagine you didn’t take a test at all. Imagine you are a government agency relying on funding, and you only receive 0.00003 percent of the budget. Then imagine your portion is out of your control, but you hoped maybe you could at least keep your tiny, tiny slice of the pie. Instead, you discover you’ve been eliminated completely.
Last Thursday, standing among more than 100 fellow students and poster boards at UF’s Undergraduate Research Symposium, I presented my research project, which aimed to understand and evaluate Common Core — the guidelines that have helped shape our current educational system. Across from me, one student explained her research on autism. Across the room, another expounded on her analysis of French literature. All throughout the vast ballroom we had populated with our projects, images of microscopic cell scans and medical illustrations bumped up against statistical analyses and comparative charts: A metaphorical handshake between the science, technology, engineering and mathematics field and the humanities came to life.
College is great. Where else can individuals pursue knowledge and interests while inhabiting society’s most intellectual environments? How lucky are we as a country to have so many options for higher education, as well as opportunities to make it happen? Many could argue the university is one of society’s greatest achievements, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is for everyone.
Ninety-three thousand fans thunder; ESPN cameras litter the sidelines, broadcasting the game to millions more; white, blue and orange Tebow jerseys, Polos and Gator football shirts pepper the crowd like a UF seasoning.
As the great Hannah Montana once said, “Nobody’s perfect.” This lyrical statement rings true to college students across the nation. We use it as a justification for everything from sleeping through our early morning lecture classes to drinking a little too much at the bars. We all screw up sometimes because really, nobody is perfect.
I have become more aware of a family trait whenever I or my brother return home after a month or two of being away: We really enjoy reminiscing. All four of us enjoy reaching into our past experiences for a good story that makes our audience crumble with laughter. We can do this for hours. And it matters little whether the story has been told or retold, as long as it is told with enthusiasm and it entertains. There are times when we become so lost in this activity that we don’t leave the dinner table until an hour or two after we had finished eating.
Solutions by The State News
